Beta News Picks

Congress to debate lifting broadcast radio's royalty exemption

Since the dawn of the musical era in radio, broadcasters have been free from paying royalties to musical performers. Radio was once the bands' ticket to the big leagues. That may change if two congressmen have their way.

How buying an Aquos gets you a Vudu

New video on demand service Vudu has announced that its set-top boxes will be made available for free with the purchase of select Sharp AQUOS LCD TVs.

Judge rules for MPAA in TorrentSpy case

A judge ruled against the BitTorrent site in its case against the MPAA this week, accusing it of tampering with evidence.

Analysts: Keep cell phone games simple

In light of a recent Parks Associates analysis of mobile and portable gaming trends, a series of casual games have hit the market for cellular handsets and portable media devices.

Mozilla releases Firefox 3.0 Beta 2, new features premiere

The next version of the world's most popular alternative Web browser is taking shape, with a more stable Beta 2 released yesterday. Added to the feature set are some new conveniences you may wonder how you managed to do without.

The GSM overseas wireless market heats up for US customers

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint Nextel, look out! European companies with unfamiliar names to many Americans, now offer much cheaper and more convenient GSM cellular services to US residents traveling abroad.

Nero 8 update offers Blu-ray and HD DVD authoring

Multimedia suite Nero has received an update which enables authoring of both Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Verizon Wireless compensates customers for 'unlimited' usage cap fiasco

More than 13,000 former subscribers of Verizon Wireless' Internet service who found their accounts terminated due to alleged misuse, started receiving refunds for their equipment costs this week.

Patch to a patch of a Microsoft patch needs patching

In the latest incident of a now-chronic problem that has been bugging Microsoft all year, a recent security patch now causes IE6 to crash in Windows XP...again.

iSuppli: iPod Touch, iPhone similar but different

On the outside, the two devices look pretty much the same, but a teardown by the company revealed that those similarities were pretty much skin deep.

Apple issues patch for MacBook keyboard freeze issue

After a deluge of posts on Apple's MacBook support forum complaining of periodic or even total loss of keyboard function in MacBooks and MacBook Pros running Leopard, Apple has issued a patch for the OS.

Microsoft and Viacom ink $500 million-plus Web and TV deal

In an online advertising and cable TV entertainment deal of sweeping proportions, Microsoft and Viacom will be teaming up with each other on both the Web as well as on Viacom's broadband network for at least five years.

Microsoft co-founder on 700 MHz bidders list, Verizon Wireless not

We won't know exactly what bidders plan to spend for a lucrative chunk of spectrum upon which to build new wireless services, but we do know who the bidders are. And at least for now, there are a few surprises.

Facebook settles suit over unsolicited text messages

The social networking site settled a suit that claimed it was sending out text messages to the former cellular phone numbers of Facebook users.

DivX playback arrives on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

DivX has announced that Sony's PS3 -- like Microsoft's Xbox 360 -- will now support the company's video format with the 2.10 firmware update, but who will use it?